Strauss-Kahn denies $6m maid payout

Raf Sanchez

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN has reportedly agreed to pay a $US6 million [$5.7 million] settlement to the New York hotel maid whose accusations of sexual assault ended his career.

Although the criminal prosecution against the former head of the International Monetary Fund and one-time French presidential contender collapsed last year, Nafissatou Diallo has pursued her allegations against Mr Strauss-Kahn in the civil courts.

Mr Strauss-Kahn's US lawyers said the report by the French newspaper Le Monde was ''flatly false''.

One of the lawyers, William Taylor, hoped to sign an agreement to end the lawsuit in a few days, a spokeswoman said. Mr Taylor and Amit Mehta, lawyers with Zuckerman Spaeder LLP in Washington, said in a statement the two sides had ''discussed a resolution but there has been no settlement''. Mr Strauss-Kahn ''vigorously denies the fantastical and erroneous information in Le Monde'', said his French lawyers, Frederique Baulieu, Richard Malka and Henri Leclerc.

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Le Monde reported that to finance the out-of-court deal, Mr Strauss-Kahn would take out a $3 million bank loan and borrow the rest from his estranged wife, Anne Sinclair.

Sinclair, an American journalist and millionaire, stood by her husband throughout the scandal but the pair finally separated this northern summer.

The Frenchman is yet to hear whether a French court plans to press ahead with charges of ''aggravated pimping''. Prosecutors allege that he was involved in a prostitution ring run out of a luxury hotel in Lille. He denies the charges.